From the gut

摘要

Sages from philosophers to pollsters have long struggled to explain what makes voters lean left or right. As political animals, people are unpredictable. Why do conservative poor people vote against their economic interests? Why do privileged young intellectuals stump for the welfare state? Some political scientists like to believe political preferences are rooted in "rational choices". Sociologists claim that political inclinations are informed by a person's home, institutions and social groups. Now it is time for the biologists and psychologists to weigh in, argues Avi Tuschman in his new book "Our Political Nature". An anthropologist by training, he claims that evolutionary instincts shape political pref-erences-and inform partisanship-far more than income or what people watch on television.